IF there’s one thing us Brits are good at, it’s hard rock.
With flowing locks hanging way down past their shoulders and impossibly tight flared jeans, the pioneers of this unvarnished genre strutted the world stage and sold millions of records.
Leading the charge from these shores in the late Sixties and early Seventies was the so-called “unholy trinity” — Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
Why, you might ask, did good Old Blighty supply these all-conquering monsters of rock?
“We were all nutters, that’s why!” says Purple’s lead singer Ian Gillan, possessor of one of the form’s most commanding hollers.
“I used to listen to American bands and think, ‘My God, they’re so well-rehearsed, everything is just so absolutely tickety-boo.’
“But, with the British bands, we were just nuts. We’d go on stage and do anything.”
I’m talking to Gillan because Deep Purple are the last men standing of the big three, still slaying stadiums and still making new music.
Currently embarked on a world tour taking in Europe, the US and South America, with UK dates set for November, they are releasing their 23rd studio album — the effervescent and enigmatically-titled =1 (more on that later).
These days, the band consists of Gillan, founder member Ian Paice (drums), Roger Glover (bass), Don Airey (keyboards) and recent recruit Simon McBride (lead guitar), who has replaced Steve Morse.
From this line-up, Gillan, Paice and Glover played on the career-defining albums Deep Purple In Rock (1970) and Machine Head (1972).
They also featured on many of the band’s best-known songs — Smoke On The Water, Child In Time, Black Night and Strange Kind Of Woman among them.
Speaking from his home in Portugal, Gillan, 78, a mine of useful information, returns to the Led Zep, Sabbath and Purple phenomenon.
“Just like ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’, the ‘unholy trinity’ was created entirely by our good friends the music journalists,” he says.
“We knew them, drank with them and they put into words what everyone was doing — something distinctive and identifiable.”
Gillan gives a huge amount of credit to the Brummie hell raisers led by Ozzy Osbourne and guitarist Tony Iommi.
From late 1982 until early 1984, he actually experienced Sabbath first hand, replacing Ronnie James Dio as lead singer during Ozzy’s lengthy hiatus.
He says: “To a certain extent, Sabbath were the most important because without them there would have been no Seattle (grunge scene) or heavy metal.
“What Tony was delivering in those early days was just awesome. It was so powerful.”
Gillan continues: “The three bands did something that had never been done before.
“They were putting into action all the things that had been building up over the previous ten years.”
He acknowledges the impact of Jim Marshall, known as “Lord Of The Loud”, who pioneered guitar amplifiers so bands could turn the volume up to eleven.
He also stresses the power of the transistor radio which gave young people control over the music they wanted to hear.
He says: “The family radio was plugged into the wall and controlled by your parents but suddenly we had one little thing you could put in your pocket and take to the park or the beach.
“Therefore it wasn’t your parents deciding you should listen to Frank Sinatra, it was YOU thinking YOU could listen to Little Richard.
“That had a knock-on effect for kids with wild imaginations.”
One such kid was Gillan himself, destined for a life in rock and roll.
“I grew up in a musical family,” he says, before giving me a quick-fire account of his path to Deep Purple.
There was nothing artificial about it. It was completely organic
Gillan
“My granddad sang opera, my uncle was a jazz pianist and I was a boy soprano in the church choir.
“When I heard Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel, everything changed.
“I was in blues bands and then I was with a harmony pop group called Episode Six.
“We had about 12 singles. We were very good, not instrumentally powerful but adequate, and then I got the gig with Purple.”
Gillan had already teamed up with Glover when they were invited to join what became the classic line-up with Paice, Ritchie Blackmore (guitar) and “father of the band” Jon Lord (keyboards).
“I’d started writing with Roger so when we joined Purple in August ’69, we were not just singer and bass player but also a songwriting team.
“Everything slotted into place — it was serendipitous.”
The line-up’s first big achievement was breakthrough album Deep Purple In Rock.
“It established the band,” says Gillan. “There was nothing artificial about it. It was completely organic.
“I remember the joy in the rehearsal rooms at Southall Community Centre — you couldn’t get us out of there.
“Songs were being written every ten minutes and then discarded.
Some were tried out on stage and then forgotten the next day.
“Child In Time was written in ten minutes flat, just incredible.”
Gillan says this inspired meeting of musical minds meant “Purple were very lucky in the early days.
“With Jon, Ritchie and Ian, as well as myself and Roger, we had a wealth of influences, from orchestral compositions to big band swing, to blues and soul.
“That set things up for the future, we could bend in the wind. It saw us through the few rough times but mostly it’s been great.”
Next, I ask Gillan about instant earworm Black Night, which went to No2 in the UK singles chart in the summer of 1970.
“That was so organic,” he replies. “One afternoon, we wrote and recorded the backing track.
“But we didn’t have a song, so we thought we’d go to the pub and have a think (and a drink I imagine).
“We came back after a few hours with lyrics scratched on beer mats and put down the vocals.
“The title was nicked from a song by Arthur Alexander (American country-soul singer) — but it’s a load of gibberish really!”
The third album to feature Gillan and Glover, Machine Head, released in 1972, is regarded today as peak Purple.
The singer agrees but says all the band’s albums he’s been involved in “are like kids to me”.
“They’re not all great but I love them all,” he continues.
“Evidence shows that Machine Head was absolutely catalytic in cementing our future.”
The first track on Side Two, Smoke On The Water, became Deep Purple’s signature song, kicking off with its iconic riff.
Gillan vividly remembers its creation.
“We needed six more minutes of music to complete the album and we were short of time,” he says.
“We had this jam, so we quickly wrote lyrics that were a biographical account of making Machine Head, and that was it.”
‘Very simple song with a great riff’
For Purple it was just another song, albeit a very handy one as it got the album over the line. Then bingo!
Gillan continues: “Many months after the record’s release, during an American tour, a guy called Russ Shaw from Warner Bros came along to see us and he saw the crowd reaction to Smoke.
We were so skint. We had no clothes
Gillan
“He tried to figure out why we hadn’t released it as a single.
“Of course, it was six minutes long, so no radio station would touch it.
“We edited down to three minutes 54 seconds and put it out a few days later.
“It became the most played song in the world at the time.
“It becomes stuck in the mind. Very simple song, very hooky, great riff.”
After Machine Head, Gillan stayed with Purple for the cracking double live album Made In Japan and the underwhelming studio effort Who Do We Think We Are but he left before the end of 1973.
Then came stints with his solo outfits Ian Gillan Band and Gillan as well as his year-long Black Sabbath sojourn before a Purple comeback in 1984.
Aside from a short break between 1989 and 1992, largely caused by “creative differences” between himself and Blackmore, it has been Purple all the way for the singer.
He gives a special shout-out to the two other members who have been in it for the long haul — Paice and Glover.
“Oh, those guys!” cries Gillan. “Without them, you wouldn’t have a rhythm section and without a rhythm section, all the solos mean nothing.
“Ian Paice grew up as a child in a musical family, the same as me. And he’s been the rock behind the band since it started.
“He’s the founding father now that Jon (Lord) is gone and the only rock drummer I know that swings.
“That’s because of the way he grew up and his influences.
“I’ve played Smoke On The Water with some heavy metal drummers and some very famous drummers and not one of them has played it right.
“They were all bashing the hell out of the drum kit. Ian lets the music do its work.
“It’s in his bones and he’s probably the most important member of the band.”
Next, Gillan turns his attention to his original partner in crime.
“Roger Glover was almost my mentor because he started writing before me,” he recalls.
“We spent days and weeks and months practising the craft of writing, learning about the percussive value of consonants, learning about which vowel sounds to use on a high note.”
Gillan says the rock star lifestyle was just a dream when they met.
“We were so skint. We had no clothes,” he says.
“And when we joined Purple, we couldn’t go out to a party at the same time because we only had one pair of trousers between us, one presentable shirt and literally a piece of string for a belt.
“Roger had no shoes and mine had holes in the bottom.”
Gillan is thankful to still have Paice and Glover by his side.
“They’re the most compatible rhythm section going,” he says.
This brings us to the new album, =1, one of Purple’s strongest in years and filled with the old Seventies spirit.
The strange title draws a thoughtful explanation.
Gillan says it comes from trying to navigate the complexities and the bureaucracy attached to modern living.
“I started drawing an equation in my Google book which I made as complicated as my simple maths could allow — but it was still fairly impressive.
“I had all the complications on the left hand side and, on the right, it was just the number ONE, which is what I wanted to achieve.
The loose conceptual idea that hangs it all together is simplicity
Gillan
“One is symbolic of simplicity and, I thought, little exercises like this keep me sane.
“Suddenly, it dawned on me that this would be a great totem for the whole record.
“The loose conceptual idea that hangs it all together is simplicity.”
Of the songs, standout Lazy Sod has a great back story.
“That comes from when I moved out to Portugal 17 years ago and set my house on fire,” Gillan says ruefully.
“I threw a log on the fire and next thing I knew, the room’s full of smoke.
“There was a bird’s nest in the chimney and a lot of tar and stuff had accumulated over the years, so it started a blaze.
“I was dreaming about that fire — it stays in your mind,” Gillan concludes.
As for another strong offering, Portable Door, he says “I’ve had a portable door in my head since I was at school.
“It’s very handy. I can come and go as I please, like being invisible!”
Gillan moves on to Old-Fangled Thing, which is essentially “a song about a pencil”, the invention which represents “the birth of civilisation”.
He also mentions the silky sound of No Money To Burn.
“I love that riff,” he enthuses. “It’s got that little cheeky skip at the end of each line.”
The hair is a bit shorter and the trousers less tight but one thing’s for certain, Ian Gillan and Deep Purple still rock — hard!
=1
(Out today on earMUSIC)
